Colour my Dreams
by jadey36
Summary: Someone is having a rough night.


**Disclaimer: **Robin Hood belongs to Tiger Aspect and the BBC. No copyright infringement intended. All rights reserved.

* * *

**Colour my Dreams**

Like wheat. The same buttery-brown, the same earthy smell of soil and brisk autumn winds. He runs his hands through the tousled locks. No, not wheat – softer. The calloused skin on the pads of his fingers catches on a small knot of hair, works past it, down to the uneven ends.

She lifts her face to look up at his. Her light blue eyes sparkle with happiness. Her thin pink lips part slightly, anticipating his lips on hers.

He gently tucks a strand of wavy hair behind her ear. Her breath is warm on his face. He thinks there is a reason he should not be kissing her, but he cannot remember what that reason is.

Easing her face towards his own, he buries his hands in her thick locks. He does not remember her hair being this thick. Something has changed. The strands of hair run slick through his fingers – greasy. And a perfume he cannot put a name to fills his nostrils.

It is too late to duck out of the kiss now without hurting the woman's feelings. Their lips meet. It is not the soft and hesitant kiss he'd been expecting. Instead, it is an insistent and punishing crush of mouth on mouth. A thick, warm tongue pushes past his teeth and slides wetly against his own tongue – searching, exploring, demanding.

And he knows something is wrong – very wrong.

His hands slide from the mass of hair and he opens his eyes.

Eyes, as blue and as unfathomable as the skies, stare back at him.

The lips he has just kissed part to say something. It sounds like an apology, or maybe a curse. The voice is deep, slightly raspy, and most definitely male. Yet he plunges in for another kiss, burying his hands into dark brown-black hair and, finally, he puts a name to the perfume – leather.

* * *

With a start, he jerks awake, heart thumping painfully against his rib cage. His right hand is a balled fist; he is surprised not to find it clutching a handful of dark hair.

He sits, bewildered, and sees the first blush of dawn; orangey-pink capped with blue, the promise of a perfect summer's day.

He turns his head.

Kate is sleeping. She has her back to him. Her wheat-gold hair is all over the place; evidence of a restless night.

He twists and sees Gisborne, sleeping in Will's old bunk, also with his back to him. One arm hangs off the side of the bed, fingertips brushing the earthen floor. Strange to see the pale, gloveless flesh instead of the usual leathered black. Like Kate, Gisborne's mop of dark hair is messy and tangled, evidence of an equally disturbed night.

He rubs his face. Colours dance before his eyes – light and dark. He tries to remember the name of that other colour, the one he should be able to see as clear as day and yet one that seems to be fading more and more from his memory, even as he fights with every fibre of his being to keep hold of it.

Gisborne jerks in his sleep, mumbles an oath.

He thrusts his sword arm under his pillow, instinctively feeling for his knife, even though he knows there is no need: Gisborne is on their side now.

His hand slackens and he lets go the blade's hilt. He brushes his own hair from his eyes, and that is when he sees it, stuck to his sweaty palm – a single long hair. And he remembers the name of the colour that has been eluding him: brunette.

It is one of Marian's hairs, the only tangible piece of evidence of a stolen moment they had in the camp, in his bed, the gang busy elsewhere.

He slumps back onto his bunk and winds the hair around his middle finger, tightly, until the finger pulses, turns bloodless.

He closes his eyes, but the wheat-yellow hair still dances behind his eyelids – beseeching him, and the brown-black hair – bewitching him.

He thinks back, trying to recall the blue eyes of the woman he loves – loved – but the blue eyes that stare back at him are not hers.

Lifting his hair-wrapped finger to his nose, he anticipates the smell of summer rains tinged by the faintest hint of rosewater. Nothing.

He looks again at Kate, who wants him, and who he does not want; and then at Gisborne, who he should not want, but does, and Robin wonders when it was that his dreams changed their colour.

~ **fin **~


End file.
